The present invention relates to an apparatus having a single lever arm for operating the brake and accelerator of a motor vehicle by hand.
Prior art forms of hand controls have suffered from a variety of shortcomings. Thus, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,707,886 and 2,724,285 disclose hand control devices having a single lever to operate both the brake pedal and the accelerator of a motor vehicle. With these devices, however, once the force to be applied to the brake pedal has been set, there is no way to independently adjust the force to be applied to the accelerator. Furthermore, these devices are not readily adaptable to vehicles having tilt wheel steering columns.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,472,094 discloses a device having separate lever arms to individually control the brake pedal and the accelerator of a motor vehicle. This type of arrangement is cumbersome and more difficult to operate than a device having a single lever arm. Furthermore, there is no provision for adjusting the force to be exerted on the accelerator.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,627,522 a device is disclosed which utilizes a single lever arm movable in two planes to control the brake and accelerator of a motor vehicle. In this device a cable assembly is tensioned in order to exert a force on the accelerator, but no means for adjusting the force required to tension the cable assembly is provided.
None of the aforementioned prior art devices disclose the ability to adjust the force applied to actuate the accelerator independently of the adjustment of the braking force. Thus, once the braking force applied by movement of the operating lever has been adjusted, there is no capability to further adjust the force required to actuate the accelerator. In other words, should one make the necessary adjustments in order to achieve a desired braking force, they have heretofore had to settle for the force exerted on the accelerator which resulted from that braking force adjustment. Independent adjustment of the force exerted on the accelerator has not been possible.
Therefore, despite the existence of the aforementioned hand control devices, there exists a need for improved devices for operating the brake and accelerator of a motor vehicle by hand, so constructed as to be easy to operate, and which allows for independent adjustment of the brake force and accelerator force.